Run
On her debut album, Alison Wonderland (AKA Alex Scholler) seems intent on showing that ‘bangerz’ doesn’t have to be a dirty word – and she very nearly pulls it off.
The unrelenting bass in her 2014 single, I Want U, probably had you hooked on Wonderland’s peculiar brand of dance-pop-meets-dub, even if you kept it a secret guilty pleasure. But the question for her full-length was whether it would have enough depth to sustain 12 tracks. Lead single, U Don’t Know, doesn’t provide much of an answer, and lands very close to her earlier work – the tried and tested formula of placing saccharine vocals over a jarring beat. It’s catchy, but not that exciting.
But delve a little further, and it turns out those crutches disguise genuinely interesting structural twists. Already Gone, featuring Brave and Lido, is slow, sparse and a little weird. But it’s the title track, Run, that really straddles the line between straight-up club jam and the strange zone Wonderland has carved out for herself. Maybe it has something to do with her being a classically trained cellist – at times the song feels highly orchestrated.
It’s no secret that Wonderland is as much a songwriter as a DJ/producer. So go dance your arse off – no shame.
4 stars
EMILY MELLER
